"Your Inner Fish" Chapter 2- Getting a Grip

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No, unfortunately Shubin doesn't tell us how we got our grip. Nor hands. Nor any other part of our body.

Chapter 2 tries to make a case that humans have a fishy ancestry based on some similarity between bones, specifically limbs with their one big bone (eg- humerus), connected to two smaller bones (eg- radius and ulna), connected to wrist bones, carpal, metacarpal, phlanges. Tiktaalik appears to have a humerus, albeit very short and stout, along with what may be an ulna and radius, and then a bunch of small bones.

He never says how such a fin got to be that way.

So why is this evidence for common ancestry as opposed to a common design or convergence? Shubin never sez. Ya see he had already concluded that we had a fishy ancestry so he never asked those questions.

He does bring up finding the origin, not an example of, tertapod limb transition. He also brings up what could make a fish of that size leave the water- or want to leave the water. He says there were bigger and meaner fish, but Tiktaalik had already escaped to the shallows. And waiting millions of years for some genetic change that may never come isn't a good strategy.

Then there is what will you eat if you leave the water? Oh luckily other organisms had already beaten Tiktaalik to it and established themselves on land.

But anyway Neil needs to get a grip because there are alternative explanations for what he is observing and explaing.

end chapter 2